


Apocalypsis Mundi

by havocthecat



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Apocalypse Fix-it, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Dark Quickening, Future Fic, Gen, Methuselah Stone, Post-Apocalypse, light quickening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21762331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: After a hundred years, Amanda and Methos come to the epicenter of the apocalypse. It's not that they want to. They're not heroes, they're desperate. They're on a last-ditch effort to put the world back on the road it's meant to be on, instead of the path to madness that it's been dragged down by a Dark Quickening let loose upon the world.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 39
Collections: Highlander Secret Santa (ShortCuts) 2019





	Apocalypsis Mundi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adabsolutely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adabsolutely/gifts).



> Thank you to my betareaders, LadySilver and Raine, as well as Celli, aka She Who Encourages My Id. She's guilty of so much, but that's what I love her for.

The sky roiled with dark clouds lashed by winds that hadn't died in generations. The clouds provided the backdrop for an ill-omened, sickly waning moon that Amanda cursed, more or less under her breath, though Methos wished it would be a little bit more, not less. He didn't need the play-by-play on the lock she was picking--

"Rusted shut, and cheap to boot. You'd think if they didn't take care of their security it'd be easy to break into." She kicked the door with black leather boots that Methos thought had gone out of style in about 2050, not that he saw any reason to give up good boots over mere fashion, but this was Amanda. She thought things like that were important.

"You seem personally offended." Methos tried not to feel the itch between his scapulae as he kept his gaze roving on the crumbling intersection behind them. It could just have been the wood of the shack he was leaning on. It had been a house at one point in time, but he wasn't sure anything that hadn't been lived in for a hundred years counted as a home. Not any longer.

"I'm always offended by this sort of thing." Amanda huffed and pulled a canister of something out of her bag of tricks. Oil? Amanda had a bag of tricks full of contraptions that Methos didn't understand. He didn't need to. Not with Amanda here. 

He narrowed his eyes. Were those shadows moving against the wind?

Methos straightened and squinted at them even while he reached for his broadsword. "Fine. But be offended quietly. I have a bad feeling about Paris."

"You have a bad feeling about everything." She gave him a sidelong look, even while the sharp tang of oil filled the air and she jimmied the lock again. It hadn't worked the last three times she tried. Whatever she was doing with her lockpicks become just that much more precise, and she got the self-satisfied look he was used to from her after a job well done.

"Just in time." Duncan used to joke that Methos could curdle milk with that note to his voice. Methos brushed the thought away. No time for sentiment; the shadows weren't moving in the same patterns as anything blown by the wind. Two hollow, dark figures crawled across the broken concrete in three-dimensional shapes that had Methos unsheathing his broadsword. Amanda was fussing with the doorknob, trying to twist it open gently. "Stop acting like a professional chef and break the door down if you have to! We have a little problem."

Amanda threw a glance over her shoulder. The only sign of panic was her eyes widening before she wrenched the doorknob and he and Amanda almost fell inside. "That was faster than they've ever been," she said, as the door slammed shut. The wooden sound echoed as hollowly in his ears as Amanda's laughter.

"We're close to the epicenter." Methos kept his broadsword out while Amanda relocked the door behind them and hauled a large and mostly still solid table to block it. There were only a few spots damp with rot. Bless the Parisians and their ridiculously solid furniture construction.

"Lucky us," muttered Amanda. She turned around and eyed the fireplace warily. "Remember central heating? Wasn't that lovely?"

"That time was a delightful epoch of enlightenment in the world." Methos smashed the nearest chair into pieces with the hilt of his sword. It wasn't the prettiest nor the best for his broadsword, but it felt very, very good right about now.

"Got a little bit of aggression to work out there, Methos?" Amanda started rifling through papers on the desk shoved in the corner. "Cute family. Pretty rich, the mom's in Gucci. Could be some upstairs. There's still a market for it in the safe areas."

"I'm thrilled with the state of the world's black markets. Aren't you?" He sheathed his broadsword and managed to lay and start a roaring fire, enough to drive back the shadows of the world while Amanda tried to find some remnants of the old one. Methos thought about smashing another chair for kindling if they ran low in the middle of the night and the shadows started growing. Or maybe he just wanted to smash something else.

"I like to look on the bright side of things." Amanda had narrowed her eyes at him and given that disbelieving 'hmph' that rankled him, so he decided against it with a dignified look that she'd once compared to a pampered cat.

Methos thought Amanda was the one more like a cat, but the last time he'd made the comparison, she'd planted a Faberge egg on him. He'd barely been able to drop it in MacLeod's bathroom and escape before the police had shown up. MacLeod had been able to get out of it with a little it of the old Highland charm.

"Get some sleep." Amanda tossed his bedroll at him with more gentleness than he'd seen from her since she'd cradled MacLeod's decapitated head in her hands. They'd seen his Quickening pour into the sky in a black stream from a mile away, unclaimed by any Immortal, and the world had ended while they'd run hellbent to save a man already dead. "I'll drop a couple of charms in front of the door and paint the signs Rebecca taught me. We'll head to Darius' chapel in the morning."

Amanda muttered something sarcastic under her breath. Methos pretended to ignore it.

***

Life before watches had given Amanda Immortals an internal sense of timekeeping. It still woke her with the dawn even when there wasn't one. Not anymore. Not since Duncan.

"Are you ready for this?" Methos was bright and chipper, but there were dark circles under his eyes. They'd both been kept awake by the thunder and lightning in the sky. Amanda had slept fitfully until even after the storm had died down in the middle of the night.

"You know me, Methos. I'm ready for anything." Amanda pushed her hair back out of her face and stood. It had gotten too long on this trip. She couldn't keep her pixie cut without a decent hairdresser, but a girl could do her best.

Methos, master of the subtle art of never telling anyone anything until forced into it, tried to pretend there was no recognition in his eyes when Amanda yanked a giant shard of bronze out of one of the gouges in the front door. She locked it behind them anyway. There wasn't just Gucci upstairs, there was Prada and Dior, and she was looting the closet on the way out of Paris. If they survived to make it out of Paris.

"Something you want to share with the class, Methos?" Amanda crossed her arms and gave him the look she'd learned from Rebecca and used on her own students. Stern, kind, but ultimately disappointed.

Methos' shoulders sagged in just a fraction before he caught himself and glared at her. Still worked like a charm, though. "My brothers. Two of them. Duncan--"

"Took their Quickenings and now that Duncan's gone they're running loose." Amanda waved one hand in a circling motion, ignoring Methos' widened eyes. Yeah, I heard." Sometimes being a recluse was bad for Methos' gossip game. He was lucky he'd found the Watchers or he'd never have been able to make small talk at Immortal Christmas parties.

"You heard." His voice was flat with disbelief.

Amanda paused on her way to the garage, where their horses had been stabled for the night, and raised one eyebrow at him. "All of it."

She tilted her head at the garage. When Methos didn't start moving, she gave him the look that said 'if you don't walk now, we may well need to deal with the shades of unclaimed Quickenings, so let's get a move on." At least Methos was smart enough to move while arguing, instead of insisting they discuss it then and there with danger all around. Sometimes she thought that Duncan preferred to make it worse before they got out of danger.

The garage door was in worse shape. The nauseating smell of burst viscera hung in the air along with the coppery tang of blood. Their horses lay on the ground, covered in flies. Amanda's poor stallion lay with its brown mane tossed across Methos' mare's dappled white flank.

"I guess we're walking." He sounded resigned as they stepped back. Amanda closed the garage door on the bloodied corpses of their horses. She hoped their Watchers had made it through the night. Had Joe's great-grandson even assigned them Watchers, knowing where they were going? Paris was even riskier to mortals' lives than it was to Immortals. She supposed they'd have always had to walk. The closer they got to Darius' church, the stronger the shades got.

There wasn't a population left alive in Paris to stare at them walking down the street. Amanda would have enjoyed a stroll down the Paris streets with Duncan, stealing his credit card and going on a shopping spree to see that little vein in his forehead start throbbing, but now, she and Methos were avoiding cobblestones that hadn't been maintained in a hundred years.

"So who told you?" Methos stepped over a root. There weren't even Watchers that she could spot. Either they'd gotten better in the past hundred years, or Joe's grandson was too smart to send a couple mortals into the epicenter of an unclaimed Dark Quickening and had started using drones.

She braced for this one. "Cassandra."

Methos gave her a sharp, surprised glance. He had one hand on his hilt and a dark look to his eyes. "I wasn't aware the two of you knew each other."

"For crying out loud, Methos!" Amanda stopped and threw up her hands at him. "You think Immortal women don't talk? I've known about the Horsemen for centuries. Rebecca, Cassandra, and I spent more than one Hanukkah with Cassandra. She used to get shitfaced on wine and latkes and complain about how you killed her people. Every year, you know. For hours. Not that I blame her."

"Let me get this straight. You and every other female Immortal that Rebecca has hosted know that story and you trust me to do this?" Methos dropped his voice and frowned at her in disbelief, but she'd known the man more than a thousand years. He was hiding his shock, but really. How often did the man interact with Immortal women?

Amanda kept walking, because she'd heard the last reports from Paris. London. New York. Seacouver. Every city with a decent Immortal population. She knew what was coming. The clouds had started to gather overhead. They were white, but edged with dark gray. "I may not have been one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but I'm not exactly one of the good guys. I'm just not one of the worst ones. What, you want me to judge you?"

She could have easily been if not for Rebecca. Duncan. Cory and his ridiculous crusade to rob the rich and give to the poor, not himself. Lucy and her grudge. Joe and his cantankerousness hiding the kindest, most accepting heart she'd ever known. God, she missed him and Richie. Cassandra and all her cautionary tales. Even Methos himself had kept Amanda from falling into an abyss of greed.

She had the deep, desperate hunger of a woman who'd never eaten her fill until after her first death, and who'd never had warm clothing until she'd snatched it out of Rebecca's hands, and who had never known love until Rebecca's infinite patience and gentleness had worn away her defenses. If not for Rebecca, if not for the others, Amanda would have taken, and taken, and taken even more, until some poor fool tried to stop her, and then she'd have killed them for getting in her way. Who would have been there to stop her?

Five thousand years ago, Methos hadn't had Rebecca. He'd had the Horsemen. Cassandra hated him, but Amanda understood him.

She glanced over and saw Methos giving her a speculative, analytical look. "Interesting."

"What?" snapped Amanda. "You didn't think I spent that many years oblivious, did you?"

_Men._

When she rolled her eyes, the clouds were black and had built into layer upon layer. Lightning cracked black across the sky. What weak sunlight there was had been lost. Methos followed her gaze upward. "Damn."

"We're close to the church." Amanda grinned at Methos as the thrill of excitement started to simmer in her veins. Methos shook his head at her, not in the resigned way that Duncan had where he knew he was going to go along with her no matter what. No one had loved being dragged unwillingly on adventure the way Duncan had loved it.

Her heart could have broken the day Duncan had died. It almost did, but she'd pasted it back together the same way she'd done after John had called to tell her Rebecca died. She couldn't fix her heart, but she could fix something else, though this time she had to fix the world.

If this didn't work, Duncan's Quickening would stay lost. His very soul would be lost, and Rebecca's Quickening would be unclaimed forever too. They'd never be together in the end, wherever that was. Whatever that was.

"So run for it. Let's get to the church." Methos shoved her and they stumbled forward until jagged lighting that sucked any color from its surroundings dove down and forked into two jagged points on the cracked, buckled roadway that unfolded into two human figures. Damn. Quickening shades.

Amanda reached behind her and drew her Spanish espada from its hidden sheath. Not the rapier she used to use, but made a change to shake up old enemies who expected the same weapon as always. Methos had drawn his broadsword, but his face had paled into an expression of existential dread. "Not you two again--"

"You have the most interesting old enemies, Adam." See, she could play nice with secret identities, even after Dark Quickening-afflicted shades had killed off a majority of the world's population. There wasn't that much holy ground that could fend off the dead.

"You haven't told this one who you are, Brother?" The one with the mocking voice was framed in shadow, like all of them were, but he had a black, jagged scar inked over his eye. It twisted as he grinned in some kind of sick triumph at Methos. "Worried she'll come after your five thousand year old head?"

Scar Eye waited, and Amanda beamed at him with a thousand watt smile, just like she did at the Sultan when she'd danced for him. And Bernard Crimmins, just before she'd sold him the Stone of Scone. Also Kit O'Brady when she'd played the winning hand that had taken The Queen of Spades from him. Or Zachary Blaine any of the times she'd gotten the upper hand on him, including just before she took his head. None of them had liked that smile either.

Scar Eye sighed and gave her a disappointed schoolteacher face. Amanda thought he was going to try to lecture her. Sometimes the bad guys did that, as if they thought she was going to listen to them?

"Boy, you thought that was going to be a big reveal, didn't you?" Amanda laughed her most delightful laugh, her gaze flicking over Scar Eye's shoulders to catch Methos' eyes. She hadn't missed how he and the other shade had moved to cut her and Methos off from each other, but Amanda just beamed even more.

The other shade had long hair pulled back into a ponytail and bared his teeth at her in a growl. He raised a sabre made of shadow and rattled it at her, brandishing it with the promise of blood and worse in his eyes as he looked at every inch of her figure. She was calling this one Sabre. He was a _real_ charmer.

"Hey, Methos. Your buddies know I've handled these kinds of threats at least once a week since I was five, right? I've stopped being afraid of them." There was nothing she could say to a couple of undead Immortals to get them to back off. Their type never did. Mortal or Immortal, bullies were all the same.

The one with darkness slashed over his eye laughed in a way that might have made her bowels weak with fear if she hadn't been living with it for so long. "I'll show you fear, woman."

He advanced on her. It was a potentially losing battle, even with the fact that Amanda never showed her full hand, not with Duncan, not with Nick, not even Methos. No one. Amanda parried anyway, even though her arms shook with the force of Scar Eye's blow. Pain shot up her wrists.

Methos lunged for them, looking frantic at the thought of Scar Eye and Amanda dueling. Was he worried about her or about him? Sabre intercepted and parried Methos' broadsword, sparking black lightning to leave jagged scorch marks against the pavement.

"It's fine." Amanda snarled it through gritted teeth. Scar Eye was as strong as the force of the Quickening-fueled storm in the sky above them. She was going to have to ask Methos who two these were. Later. If they survived. "I love a fight with no head rolling at the end."

"Less talking, more fighting, Amanda." Methos' voice was low. Grim. Adam Pierson was gone and Death was in his eyes. He circled around Sabre, who laughed with wild abandon and attacked.

"Join us, Brother. Caspian doesn't want to kill you, and I've got my heart set on tormenting the world with you at my side for another thousand years." Scar Eye pressed an advantage he thought he had against Amanda when her ankle wobbled and almost gave. Idiot. Did he think her ankle could do that in boots like these? They were built for support. Also fashion. He lunged for her at a feigned slip backward and Amanda disemboweled him.

Scar Eye dropped to his knees, shock washing over his face, before he shook it off and pushed himself upward to come at her again. Thick, ropy intestines bulged out of his stomach, but he ignored them for an instant before they vanished in a flash of black void. Amanda groaned. If only disemboweling did more. Or anything.

"Tormenting me, you mean. I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline, Brother." Methos spat it out, even as he sliced a path through Sabre's - Caspian's arm - that should have left it hanging from a couple of tendons. Dark lightning absorbed the light around him and the injury was gone. His arm was whole. "Besides, I've gotten quite attached to Amanda and you'd just insist we kill her. The Horsemen was always too much of a boys' club for my taste."

Caspian attacked Methos again. Even in the middle of a fight to the death, Amanda admired the battle out of the corner of her eye. Methos was the better swordsman of the two of them. He was precise. He calculated where Caspian's sabre was going to lash out before it got there and his broadsword flicked around to block and parry without wasting movement. He struck at Caspian with controlled strength; a direct contrast to Caspian's wild abandon, but it was a losing battle.

Even with five thousand years of experience, Methos had all the limitations of Immortal flesh. His nerve endings translated signals from brain to arm to wrist slower than thirty seconds ago. His chest was heaving and his shoes scraped against the pavement where they'd been light just a second before. Caspian was lightning and fire, Quickening made flesh.

This had to end. Amanda's arms were going numb. The rules were stupid. Did they even apply against someone who'd already lost?

Every Immortal under a thousand had gone insane from the Quickenings running loose, and most of the ones under two or three thousand were crazy from all the Quickenings in their head wanting to be set free. Methos was sane because he'd survived five thousand years through dogged stubbornness, and if that and Duncan's foolish crusades hadn't driven him crazy, nothing else could.

Amanda was the Queen of Thieves and always had an ace up her sleeve. Or so she hoped. She'd been saving this one until they were desperate, and they were pretty desperate.

"Oh, Methos. You say the sweetest things." Amanda disengaged from Scar Eye and let him believe he was going to take her. As he came straight at the junction of where her head met her neck with his Bronze Age blade, the shard of Methuselah Stone nestled against Amanda's skin started to burn. Light flared along the edge of her espada as she circled Scar Guy's blade, then extended her blade past his and drove the point of it into his smug, overconfident heart.

He discorporated with an angry cry. Caspian and Methos paused for an instant of disbelief before Caspian redoubled his attacks on Methos, who backed toward Amanda. He looked grim. Even worried. She didn't like that, so she leaned forward and gave the hilt of Methos' broadsword a sharp beat with the tip of her espada.

It knocked Methos off his stride by half a step, but Caspian had flinched back from the glow and not taken advantage of Methos' shock. Too bad for him, because that was all the time Amanda needed to extend the Methuselah Stone's glow to Methos' broadsword. She smiled and took one delicate step away.

Terror washed over Caspian's face and he took one, two, three stumbling steps backward, but Methos was having none of that retreat. With a single advance, Methos slashed through Caspian's sabre, and it evaporated into nothing. With a second, he had slashed Caspian's chest open. The man bled gouts of black void onto the street. With the third, Caspian's head soared weightless through the air for a bare instant before his entire body dissolved into inky blackness.

Methos stumbled to his knees from the force of his blows. He scrubbed his forehead with his palm as he glared up at Amanda. "What was that?" he asked, biting off each word. His voice was flat and his eyes were cold. "If you had a weapon against my br--" He paused and shook his head, his mouth twisting into what was almost a smile before it turned into a grimace. "Against those things, why didn't you share it a hundred years ago?"

"Because I didn't know how it worked a hundred years ago. I just knew Rebecca said it would protect me!" Amanda snapped at him, throwing up her free hand in exasperation. She'd survived thirteen hundred years on wits, charm, and skill with a sword, just like everyone else, and then when the world went insane, she hadn't been driven mad by the Quickenings she held inside her.

If only Rebecca had been one of the Quickening shades she'd encountered to teach it to her. She'd been looking for her for a hundred years and nothing.

"Fine." The flat look in Methos' eyes receded enough that Amanda was less worried he was going to have a sociopathic break. He'd gotten that expression a few times in the past hundred years. She'd lost Rebecca to Luther. She'd lost Fitz to Kalas. She'd lost Joe to old age and mortality. She'd lost Duncan to a new set of Hunters in a Pyrrhic victory. She'd be damned if she was going to lose Methos too.

"I've been waiting until we were at the church to play that hand." Amanda patted Methos' arm. They were still covered in a faint nimbus. "I had to use it early. Your brothers are real assholes. Now can we go? Duncan's not going to be real happy with us after this."

"He wasn't happy with us before this," muttered Methos. He rose to his feet. When he looked at Amanda this time, he was a normal man - as normal as any ancient Immortal whose life consisted of a series of compartmentalized identities meant to keep his head on his shoulders.

Amanda never bothered. It was exhausting work. Paris' skyline hadn't changed much, even without the sun. They were only a couple of blocks away from Darius' church.

"Duncan doesn't have a say in what we do anymore. He's dead." Her heart ached, but she'd lived with that pain for a hundred years. It was an old friend by now.

The clouds were heavy with rain that wasn't going to fall, so Amanda kept her espada out. Methos didn't sheathe his broadsword either. They weren't bothered on the way to St. Joseph's Chapel. Gray mist rolled through the decrepit streets of Paris, and black lightning raced across the sky, but none of the dark shapes hovering on the side streets and thoroughfares wanted to get too close to Amanda and Methos.

Darius' church was untouched by the march of time. The courtyard beyond the gate was a little overgrown, like it hadn't been mowed in about a month, but there were pink and yellow flowers turned up toward the sunlight. Otherwise it could have been any normal church in any normal Paris century. Which was a bit odd, given what they'd gone through to get to the heart of the end of the world, where both Darius and Duncan had--

"You notice there are no shadows over the church grounds, right?" Methos sounded wary. Like any of them would be.

Amanda swallowed. This was it. Was she ready? Was Methos ready? Who the hell knew. If they weren't, if they couldn't do this, the world was only going to get worse. "Sure. I could use some work on my suntan."

The door was unlocked. Was it a sanctuary, open to all like Darius had kept it, or was it a trap? Amanda took a deep breath and pretended not to notice Methos's Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He reached out and pushed the door all the way open. "Only one way to find out." His voice was a murmur.

"You have a point." With one step, she was across the threshold, Methos at her side. They were in the nave before Amanda had time to talk herself out of stupid heroism. The candles on either side of the altar were lit.

Duncan stood one step below the altar. He was smiling at the two of them, arms folded in front of his chest and katana sheathed unbroken at his side, as if it was the good old days. "Amanda. Methos." He spread his hands wide and beamed. "Welcome to the party."

"The invitation was a bit over the top, Duncan, darling." Amanda smiled as if she'd breezed back into his life after half a century to discover a girlfriend and a surrogate son. "You didn't need to end the world to get our attention."

It was the laugh that gave him away. It was hard. Cruel. More like something she'd expect from Andre Korda, not Duncan MacLeod. "It does seem more like Methos' style, doesn't it?"

"We're not here about me, MacLeod." Methos looked unutterably tired. He sprawled onto the front pew and traced the outlines of the flagstones with the tip of his broadsword. The scraping sound grated against Amanda's ears and she tried not to flinch.

"But you are Death, aren't you? Come on, Methos, don't tell me you haven't enjoyed a hundred years of it." Duncan's eyes were alight with the joy of his handiwork. "What happened to your brothers? They wanted to greet you when they heard you walking into Paris."

"No idea. It's like they vanished into thin air." Methos looked around as if it were an ordinary Sunday and they were waiting for an ordinary church service to start. An ordinary church service with swords.

"What did you do to them?" Duncan's face darkened in a hard, angry way Amanda had known from him. He drew his katana with a hissing ring of steel and advanced.

Methos pulled his head up and flicked his wrist. He parried Duncan's blade in the laziest possible way, then gave Duncan a quick glance up and down, his eyes flickering across his figure and up to his face in a scathing examination. "You're so boring when you're being afflicted by a Dark Quickening, MacLeod. All this posturing and darkness. I liked you much better when you were a stuffy do-gooder."

"You _are_ much more entertaining when you're helping me out of trouble when you're the cause of it, darling." It broke Amanda's heart to watch pain wash across Duncan's face. Something of the man she loved was left, but what? How much?

"I had to get you two here." Duncan started to pace, back to normal and every inch the Scottish laird, ready to lead his troops to battle. "I ended the world and you ignored me. I sent Zachary Blaine to find you, not to mention Morgan Walker, and Mako, and none of that did any good."

Almost back to normal, then. Who talked that casually about ending the world?

"Maybe a singing telegram next time," suggested Methos helpfully.

"I really have missed you two. Since you're here, let's talk. What kind of trouble has Amanda gotten herself into lately? Does Methos have a new identity or have the Watchers uncovered him as Methos yet?" He whirled around and pointed his katana at Amanda. "I hope you're not expecting me to keep you out of jail."

As if prisons existed anymore. The Watchers did. Trouble did. Just not prisons.

"Duncan, honey, if I'd known you wanted to gossip, I'd have brought my stash of chocolate, maybe a bottle of wine or two." Amanda shrugged and tapped her fingernails on the hard oak seat of her pew, then looked at the split, cracked ends. Manicurist wasn't a frequent career choice anymore either. She had a hard time finding a good one.

"Then what did you come here for? It wasn't some misguided notion you were going to stop me, was it?" Duncan's smile glinted as sharply in the candlelight as the blade of his katana. Somewhere in the black of his pupils, if you looked in his eyes too long, the darkness in them was deeper than it should be. She stared into his eyes, not able to look away until Methos cleared his throat and broke the spell. Amanda shook her head to clear the shadows from vision and looked over at Methos instead.

"I thought you knew that Amanda and I are too pragmatic for losing battles." Methos made tiny figure eights with the tip of his broadsword in the air. She'd had her students doing that exercise for an hour a day. A woman got nowhere in the Immortal world without strength training.

Duncan's affability vanished in a heartbeat and he rounded on them in a rage. "I know you two have scheme after scheme planned. I come off the worse in all of them. Every time. So what is it?"

"Don't be ridiculous, sweetheart. Why would I have ulterior motives?" Amanda saved her best thousand watt smile for times like these. She sheathed her espada and ignored the silent expression Methos was sending her way asking if she was insane.

Maybe, but if Duncan expected ulterior motives, Amanda was going to give him one. It wouldn't even be a lie. Amanda had at least as many ulterior motives as there were days in the week.

"Amanda. When don't you have them? What's so different about this time?" He glared at her, stern and patriarchal, angry without the glint of lighthearted humor she loved from him, then shook his head. "Just stay out of my way. I've got my heart set on blowing up the Game. I don't need to blow you two up with it. If you just stay out of my way."

"Oh, honey, you blew that up already." Amanda waved one hand in dismissal and then leaned back on her arms. She crossed her legs at the ankles. "I don't mind having less headhunters around. No, it's just--" She paused and made a face while Duncan and Methos both hung on her every word.

Even when the world ended, some things didn't change.

Amanda squinched her face into a hesitant expression and wiggled her shoulders back and forth.

"What!" snapped Duncan, while Methos just rolled his eyes.

"It's just, I do have one teensy-weensy question to ask you." She even made a pinching gesture with her fingers and slapped on her most apologetic face. Duncan was a sucker for a woman who could go from confidence to needing him in ten seconds flat. Bless his darling little Medieval Scottish heart, she loved him for wanting to serve the little clan he'd cobbled together over the centuries. Methos just stared at them both.

"One question? That's it?" Duncan turned to Methos and hooked his thumb back at Amanda. "Do you believe her? Amanda's got a certain reputation. Or is it a history?"

"I think we call it a rap sheet." Methos' voice was dryer than usual. 

Amanda glared at them both. Methos was supposed to be on her side! They weren't supposed to gang up on her, and they sure as hell weren't supposed to make her heartsick for the old days. As if she could forget the past century with the Methuselah Stone burning against her chest.

"Hey!" She almost yelped. "I'm being serious here."

"You're never serious. Not even when your head is at risk. Are you?" Duncan turned and smiled, still charming even when he laid the naked blade of his katana at Amanda's throat. He'd never done that before. The stories were right. You really did turn on a dime with a Dark Quickening in you.

Amanda didn't blink. Barely breathed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Methos freeze. It would be all right. She'd played poker with the devil and walked away with a winning hand more often than not. "Every now and again, I manage." She even managed to smile.

Duncan laughed as he bent down and shoved his mouth on hers, kissing her hard enough to bruise with his sword still at her throat. He pulled back, still laughing, as Amanda's lips healed. "Once or twice in a thousand years doesn't count. But all right. Let's pretend, just this once. What's your serious question?"

Amanda gave herself a run-through of her list of survival instructions. Thousand watt smile. Wide, innocent eyes. Tilted head. Ignore the sword. Act like a good girl, Amanda, and pretend it wasn't even there. Great. She had a lot of practice .

"Where's Rebecca?"

Duncan flinched. Even Methos pursed his lips in a slow, speculative expression to hide his surprise. Amanda put two fingertips on the edge of Duncan's blade and pushed it away from her throat as she stood, then wiped her hand clean of the thin trail of blood running from the quickly-healed cuts. Even dead, Duncan kept his katana razor-sharp.

"Oh, sweetie, don't tell me you're surprised I'm asking. Luther killed her. You cheated me out of his head. I'm not keeping Rebecca's Quickening nice and safe with me, which means that when you died, she got lost. I've heard about that little sneak Luther wandering around, but no Immortal left living, sane or mad, has run into Rebecca. So I'm asking you, Duncan, what have you done with her?"

She couldn't keep up the appearance of innocence, or her good mood. Amanda was angry and worried and scared. Damn Duncan for going off on another foolish crusade and getting himself killed. She wouldn't have worried if it was Duncan keeping Rebecca safe. She'd trusted him.

A shadow, literal and otherwise, washed across Duncan's face. "What makes you think I've done anything with her? What makes you think she'll have anything to do with me?"

"You had the Quickenings of the last two jabronis that tried to kill us. Not to mention the half-dozen before that." Amanda huffed at Duncan, while Methos looked insulted that she would refer to two of his long-lost, loved, hated, and feared brothers that way. "Seems pretty logical to ask you about Rebecca."

The fog had stopped rolling in behind Duncan and snaked onto the altar. It was pure white, shot through with blue veins of lightning that pulled into two pillars, one that became a tall, rangy man with shaggy brown hair wearing a priest's robes and a peaceful, understanding expression. Darius, though Amanda only knew him by reputation. Who else could it be?

The other figure she knew by more than reputation, in every intimate sense. She was tall and regal, with light titian hair, always just sheening from blonde to red, and wearing modern clothing, jeans and a white tunic, just like the last time Amanda had seen her. Her eyes were blue, almost glowing with happiness, and she smiled. 

"Rebecca." Amanda breathed her name. Their eyes met, and no one existed for that moment except them.

"Amanda. I've missed you." The knot of grief and rage Amanda had carried in her heart since Rebecca had died unraveled itself, even though this was only an oasis in a world gone mad.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Duncan slammed his fist into the wall and yelped in pain until black lightning leaped from his skin and healed his bruised, bloodied knuckles. Even dead, it left an impression. The stone wall had a fist-shaped dent in it. 

"You've been dead a little bit less time than her teacher, MacLeod," interjected Methos. He had a bone-deep weariness in his voice. 

"I've never been far, my dear." Rebecca reached one hand to her. 

The only times Amanda had been on a church altar had been when she was stealing from one. Which had been often. Rebecca knew. She'd loved Amanda no matter how often nor how wildly that she'd stolen. So had Duncan. So did Methos, for that matter. Even Darius, whom she'd never met, would have loved her. Or so she thought. He radiated gentleness and peace. Duncan had always fretted at everything Darius said, wondering if he could live up to an impossible example. 

"Amanda." With Rebecca, her name could mean anything. Rebuke. Affection. Adventure. Today, it was an invitation. Amanda stepped onto the altar and took Rebecca's hand.

Duncan cried out behind her, but when Amanda tore her gaze away from Rebecca's blue eyes, Methos had bolted from his lackadaisical pose and stood next to Duncan, one step from the altar, his hand spread on Duncan's chest.

"Methos--" started Duncan. He stared at the altar, but also he'd put his free hand on Methos, as if Methos was somehow a solid anchor to the rest of the world. As if he wasn't a memory or a ghost that could somehow blow away in a storm.

"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod." Even Amanda knew who Darius was, and she'd never dared steal from this church in all her centuries of life. She'd barely even come here a couple times with Rebecca. 

"Darius. I haven't seen you in here before." Poor Duncan, torn between anger and tears. He'd always been close to the old priest. Between Darius' death and Tessa's, she'd had to work hard to get him to enjoy life again, even if it had only been for a little while. She supposed she still owed him for getting her out of trouble with the counterfeiters. 

"I've never left." Darius spread his hands and looked around, a gentle smile on his face.After everything that Duncan had done, Darius still sounded warm and inviting. "You took a long time to look and listen to the world around you. I've been waiting to have another one of our conversations."

The naked longing on Duncan's face made Amanda's heart break again. She stuck her free hand in the pocket of her jeans and tried not to stare down at where Rebecca had her fingers wrapped around Amanda's. They were cool, and her skin felt covered with static where she stood next to Rebecca.

Amanda smiled at Duncan. Her lips might have wavered and her vision blurred, but she was able to ignore Methos' understanding look. She didn't want to do this. Damn Duncan and his Dark Quickening for not giving her a choice. 

"What are you doing all the way over there? It's not a reunion without you up here." Amanda mustered another smile and beamed at them. Rebecca's hand tightened on hers, and the hairs along Amanda's arm and on the back of her neck rose at the electric pulse on her skin.

It had been a century since the world had ended. Just one. She'd spent a lot of that diving in the Seine and digging around for the pieces she needed, and teaching herself how to use them. Rebecca had been thousands of years old when Luther had taken her head. How could Amanda manage in less than one century what it had taken Rebecca thousands of years to do? 

Because she had to. Because someone had to, and who was going to do it? Besides, she wasn't going to trust Rebecca's legacy to anyone else.

"Come on, MacLeod." Methos nudged Duncan, who flinched

Darius smiled with a saint's patience and walked up to him. He took Duncan's hands, even the one with the sword, and urged him upward, onto the altar.

"I didn't think you'd want anything to do with me." Duncan looked shamefaced. He stared at Darius as if he expected the wrath of God to smite him, even though Duncan had been the one smiting down others. "Not after what I did."

Amanda and Methos locked eyes. It couldn't be this easy, could it?

Of course not.

Duncan's expression changed again. Darkness washed over him. Amanda's gut wrenched as Duncan took one, two, then half a dozen steps across the altar and pushed an unresisting Darius down to lay against the altar, spilling the deep burgundy wine that shouldn't have been there, but somehow was. 

"I don't want to talk." The edge of Duncan's katana gleamed sharp at Darius' jugular. He nicked Darius' carotid artery with a flick of his wrist. Blue lightning spread out in a film and licked across Darius' eyes. Methos cried out in fear, but when he tried to rush Duncan, Duncan held up his free hand. "Not unless you want me to take Darius' head again."

"Duncan. No." Amanda's voice was permafrost. In five hundred years, she'd cajoled Duncan with her voice, begged him, teased him, argued with him, seduced him a thousand times over, but she'd never used that voice on him. Not Duncan. 

His eyes met hers. "Amanda. Darling. Just wait there, will you? I won't be a moment." He raised his sword up.

She'd been too late a century ago. She'd never be too late. Not again. Amanda ripped the chain holding the shard off her neck with a snap of silver links at the same moment as she yanked the almost complete Methuselah Stone out of her hidden inner jacket pocket.

A well-built jacket never went out of style. Especially not one built like that.

Duncan started on the downswing toward Darius' neck. He moved fast, she'd give him that. She didn't have as far to go as he did. The two pieces of the Methuselah Stone became whole in the space between two heartbeats. Duncan's sword froze on the edge of Darius' mysteriously reconstituted head. Methos' expression was frozen in the most comical mask of terror she'd seen since Fitz and the "haunted" palace that she'd stolen a fortune from. 

Rebecca put her hands on Amanda's shoulders and whispered something Amanda couldn't understand in her ear. She had no weight to her, less even than Duncan. Amanda hoped she could figure out what to do. Rebecca was pure Quickening, but Amanda was living flesh with a Quickening leashed inside her. As she held the Methuselah Stone, she felt a microcosm of it reflected in every cell. It amplified her Quickening. 

If every cell held that, and the Methuselah Stone affected it, she could use the stone to create a world of her own. Amanda focused her will into the Methuselah Stone as buzzing filled her ears, drowning out the screaming coming from the altar around her. She didn't need a sword to focus the sharp crackle of lightning in her blood while the white glow of the stone filled her vision and wrapped around and through the five of them. 

Amanda opened her eyes as the droning sound died down. The world she'd created was small. The five of them were squeezed inside her bedroom in Rebecca's old abbey, before it had gotten too run down to live in. Any armchair psychologist worth his salt could figure out why she'd gone to the first place she'd felt safe and loved.

Duncan was halfway across the room from Darius. His katana sliced through an illuminated prayerbook that Amanda had never liked, and he cried out in impotent rage. It was a hallmark of how much she'd loved Rebecca that she'd never filched it and sold the damned thing. 

"What have you done, Amanda?" Duncan stalked toward her until Methos interposed himself between them with a smooth gesture. "Move, old man, before I decide I'd like the taste of a five thousand year old Quickening."

"I'd give you indigestion." Methos pushed Duncan's sword downward with a grip that was stronger than it looked when they were back in the real world. 

"We needn't fight, Duncan. There's nothing to fight about" Darius stood in his monk's robes, still harmless, still peaceful. He had an unearthly golden light around him, saintly beyond the end. Duncan had a sucking black void around him. Rebecca held a cloud of red and gold around her, edged in Duncan's darkness. Was she fighting him? Was she a part of him? 

How the hell was Amanda supposed to know what she was doing? Amanda laughed weakly. Was this world real? Everything in Rebecca's abbey was too vivid, too bright, too much like her past, only with a bright technicolor sheen of magic imposed on it. Amanda wasn't a woman of magic or mystery. She was a thief, and the best damn thief that had ever been born. So what the hell was she doing here?

Stealing some Quickenings, she guessed. Trying to save the world. Death and the Queen of Thieves. Great, that was what they had going for them. That was who they had left, since the heroic types they'd sent were gone, and damn if they were going to risk the rest. Nick Wolfe. They couldn't stop Nick, so Steven Keane had gone after him. Katherine of Samothrace. Marcus Constantine. No word on how they'd been lost, but Amanda could guess. 

"Methos, I don't need you to protect me, sweetheart." The cunning old bastard kept flashing between a harmless doctor stumbling over his own two feet and a man she'd never seen, but knew intimately, wearing a death's head mask and wielding a sword like he was born with one in his hand. 

"Amanda." Duncan smiled his circus smile at her, the one when they were throwing knives at each other and riding bareback around a ring while she was planning to abscond with the month's take and blame it on the new acrobat. He pointed his katana at her like she was a little girl and he was planning on grounding her. Or beheading her. Like he hadn't decided which. "You need to sit down and let me handle this little situation you've brought to my doorstep. I'll deal with you later."

"Your doorstep?" Amanda had the Methuselah Stone cupped in her hands. Its light spilled down her front and onto the marble flooring. She took a step toward Duncan and ignored Methos' frantic gestures at her. His expression said to back away, to run, to do anything else. If she was that sensible, they wouldn't be here.

Amanda faced Duncan. "Sweetie. I'm really sorry about what happened, but don't you think it's time to let go? Haven't you done enough?"

Duncan's shoulders sagged in for an instant, but his jaw firmed and he shook his head. Duncan grabbed Amanda's shoulders as his katana clattered on the marble with a hollow, echoing sound. "I can end the Game. I can fix all of this so we can be together. Don't you want that?" 

There was a mad, desperate hope in his eyes, and Amanda wanted to believe him. She wanted that too, but life and the Game had brought them two fates. The difference between them was that Amanda had accepted that a long time ago. 

His arms flickered and the shadows at the edges of the chapel darkened. She reached in desperation for the depths of the light in the Methuselah Stone. "I'm sorry, Duncan." Amanda hadn't cried in centuries. Her eyes filled with tears and she gave Methos a nod. They hadn't arranged a secret signal, but it worked just as well for one. 

The light turned syrupy. Sticky. Duncan tried to pull away, but Methos had his shoulders in an iron grip. He leaned over and murmured in Duncan's ear. "Sorry, MacLeod."

Not even the Methuselah Stone could protect her as Duncan broke free from Methos with a twisting move he'd probably learned from some far voyage and plunged one hand inside her heart. Duncan used the Dark Quickening that had kept him moving after his beheading and tugged at her soul to unravel her Quickening from her body, to pull the lightning from her one volt at a time. Current tore through her body and Amanda screamed. 

She'd have dropped to her knees if she could. She was weak from the pain and the only thing holding her up was Duncan's hand in her chest. Her head felt like it was splitting down the middle and her heart was splintering from the inside out.

"Be strong." Rebecca stood behind Duncan. Her blue eyes bored into Amanda's brown ones with the same glow as the Methuselah Stone. Her aura fought with Duncan's influence, twisting and biting back against the tide of void that threatened to swamp her. "You had it within yourself to stay and learn and grow when you came to me. You have it within yourself now."

Amanda's vision was going dark. She had to be hallucinating. Methos was in his death's head mask and hacking ineffectually at Duncan's arms while Darius said the Lord's Prayer in Latin. 

What did Duncan think he was doing? This was Amanda's world, damnit, and she wasn't ready to give it up. She certainly wasn't going to let some annoyingly buff, masculine, inconveniently dead, sometimes evil man tell her what to do or how to die, no matter what he meant to her. The Methuselah Stone's light, which had almost died, flared into being with a burst of golden sunlight sheened with the sparkle of an exquisite diamond. It knocked Duncan away, and Amanda stood as her Quickening rushed back into her.

"You could've warned me," grumbled Methos as he moved to stand next to her, broadsword still drawn. 

"Not really. I'm operating on instinct." Amanda just shrugged when he glared at her. "What? You wanted competent, you shouldn't have raped and murdered your way through the Bronze Age. You'd have had a better shot with Cassandra." 

Methos gave her a startled look, and Amanda narrowed her eyes at him. Well, he shouldn't have. What kind of person did that? Someone very, very angry at the world. She should have introduced him to Sigmund. Of course, by then Methos had gotten his equilibrium back. 

"Cassandra isn't my student. You are." Rebecca stood in front of her, even though Duncan was behind them, struggling to his feet and refusing Darius' offers of assistance. Did the old priest have a death wish? He didn't have a fashion sense, that was obvious. 

"Cassandra can't handle the damn Methuselah Stone." Methos straightened and glared at Amanda. 

Because Amanda didn't tell Cassandra about it so she could try to 'borrow' it. What was the point of having a secret weapon if it wasn't a secret? Plus it wasn't like she trusted some four thousand year old witch with Rebecca's legacy.

Amanda could trace every vein through Rebecca's translucent skin like lightning as her teacher folded her hands over the Methuselah Stone. "It's time."

It was the last time she was going to hear Rebecca's voice. Again. At least she was forewarned this time. "I know." 

Grief swamped Amanda in a way it hadn't since Joe had breathed his last, old and impossibly frail. He'd been surrounded by an entire family, Amy and her wife, and their children and grandchildren, all but the youngest with Watcher tattoos, along with a few Immortals who wouldn't be chased out.

Damn the rules anyway. Amanda played by her own set. The stone glowed brighter still, until Rebecca was drowned out by it, until the red gold of her hair was subsumed by the shine of the Koh-I-Noor diamond as it was lit by the sun rising over the Himalayas. 

Lightning crackled blue-white and poured from Rebecca's insubstantial form into Amanda, and then she knew. Rebecca had lived along the Mediterranean Sea as a child, and Amanda knew what it was like to feel the ocean breeze blow through your long hair as it was brushed by a slave, to always have your belly filled. 

To want for nothing. To hear coins jingling in your purse, as you grew, walking through the markets, followed by a chaperone, a companion, a slave who knew your every secret. To have suitors obsessed with your glorious red-gold hair as it blew in the ocean breeze and your freckled shoulders kissed by the sun. To be married under a chuppah to the sound of crashing glass and the gentle waves. 

Your husband spoke the words of services every Shabbat, honoring the patriarchs and the matriarchs. _Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu v'Elohei avoteinu v'imoteinu._ Blessed are you, Adonai our God, God of our fathers and mothers.

To have your chaperone - your slave - follow you through the years with narrowed eyes and a jealous step, wanting more than hand-me-downs, more than the care of your family's last barren daughter as you studied and prayed to God that you would bear children to tell the stories of your ancestors.

To tell you how you protected Methuselah's gift from God until your chaperone - the slave who had raised you from a foundling child - could no longer bear her jealousy and despair over your and slew you with the same arms that had dried your tears. 

To wake from death and learn you were Immortal, Immortal and barren forever, and the only children to pass Methuselah's legacy to would be your students, your sons and daughters in spirit. To teach them how to use the Methuselah Stone the same way you had learned at the feet of your mother, the same way she had learned, from her mother, and then--

She knew how to use the Methuselah Stone.

Amanda snapped her eyes open at the image of Luther's smug, nasty face through Rebecca's eyes. Duncan stared at her. She shrugged and gave him her best 'what can a girl do?' smile as Rebecca's memories and the whole of her Quickening settled into Amanda's soul. 

Even with his presently evil tendencies, Duncan was giving her a sorrowful look, like he wanted to take her to bed and make everything better. "Amanda, we don't have to do this--" he started. 

She was tempted. They'd had some awfully good times in a whole lot of beds. 

"Don't fight me, Duncan." Damn Luther, and Horton, and whatever hunters had taken Duncan's head, not to mention the whole damn Game.

"You know I have to." Poor stubborn Duncan, her beautiful Scottish warrior, first and always. He'd died with an unclaimed Quickening. He was still fighting the Game. He was every living Immortal's worst nightmare. 

Methos stood next to him, sword sheathed. His death mask was gone again, and he was in Adam Pierson's slouchy, unthreatening sweater. He clamped a hand onto Duncan's shoulder, his fingertips digging in. "It's time to let go, Highlander. You've held the world hostage long enough."

"Methos, no." Duncan took half a step backward, jerking to a halt when Methos shoved him forward, one step at a time. His face was young, but his eyes were implacable, until Duncan was in the border between Amanda's diamond-cut light and the darkness of his disembodied Quickening. In a burst of effort, Duncan lashed out with a lightning-quick snap kick at Amanda's chin. Darkness tore from him as his eyes narrowed in defiance.

Methos knocked Duncan's legs out from under him and held one knee on Duncan's chest, bare steel at Duncan's throat. Every muscle shook from the strain of holding the man down while he tried to twist and throw Methos off, but Duncan was weaker after the strain of failing to-- To do whatever it was that he'd tried and failed to do. 

"Any day now, Amanda!" Methos called back at her. 

"This isn't easy." Not even with Rebecca's Quickening lodged inside her, whispering encouragement, warming her heart. This was Duncan. The man she loved. She felt sick. 

"No one's judging you, but we do have people counting on us. Maybe, I don't know, the world?" Somehow Methos managed to roll his eyes, even though Duncan was trying some kind of complicated wrestling move. It figured. 

Duncan got one hand free and slammed his palm into Methos' protruding nose. There was a loud crunching sound and Methos snarled. "Damn it, MacLeod, I'm trying to save the world from your idiotic Dark Quickening, will you hold still already?"

"Damn you both!" yelled Duncan. The light of the stone started to fill the void of the Dark Quickening seeping from Duncan's pores. 

Amanda poured light into him, and blood from Methos' hands and smashed nose stained her ragged nails and Duncan's shirt. The problem with a void was its emptiness. The only thing that could fill it was--

"There is no darkness without light." Darius held his hands out to Amanda in a benediction. How was he so at peace with himself? 

Darius gave Amanda a quick look, his eyes twinkling with wisdom tempered by humor she hadn't expected. "I've had a long time to come to terms with myself." 

She hadn't expected that, but he was old. So old and at peace with himself that the light of the Methuselah Stone barely touched him before he dissolved into lightning and surrounded Duncan and Methos. 

Methos collapsed to the ground with a thud as Duncan's body fell into shadow and fused into Darius' lightning. Amanda took one step into the whole chiaroscuro hurricane and bent down to help Methos to his feet. A thousand faces passed before her, Romans and Goths, barbarians fighting endless battles, the gates of Paris and this abbey for a thousand years. 

Darius and all his Quickenings. Then a thousand more faces, and a thousand more lost their heads. Duncan's Quickenings. Luther's smug face. Kalas' face, and so she saw Fitz, because Kalas had taken his head. Grayson, Darius' old student. Everyone knew about him. He'd been as infamous as Duncan had been famous. 

There were so many Immortals that Duncan had killed. Sean Burns. The two that were Methos' brothers, the ones that had to be Horsemen, Scar Eye and Sabre, bared their teeth in a snarl as a million volts ran through her.

Amanda met Methos eyes and held his gaze. He damaged his blade's point as he levered himself upright and grabbed onto her forearms. They were propping each other up, but Amanda needed to hold onto something familiar so she could keep her sanity. To keep herself as she fought to pull the light and the dark into the Methuselah Stone and settle the Quickenings together. 

They'd promised they could stop the Quickening shades from wandering the world. Amanda had made a promise to Rebecca, and she'd be damned if she was going to break it. She gathered all her willpower, every bit of sanity she had, and the promise she'd made to herself over a thousand years ago that she'd never let anyone use her.

The last of the Quickenings, dark and light together, Darius and Duncan, streamed into the Methuselah Stone as Amanda and Methos screamed with one voice. The clear, pure gleam of the biggest, most valuable stone she'd ever held in her hands flared up and she and Methos collapsed into unconsciousness.

***

Methos came back to himself with the voices of all three of his brothers fading into the back of his skull with the force of a sledgehammer. At least they were together, though why did his brothers have to be such argumentative assholes? They made his teeth hurt. He rolled over and swallowed once to quell the roiling in his gut. 

Didn't work. He barely had time to roll onto his stomach before acidic bile tore out of his throat and he vomited on the marble altar. 

"I haven't felt the aftereffects of magic that strongly in five thousand years. Or so." The aftermath of whatever it was Amanda did to them had some side effects. He looked over at Amanda, paper white and curled around the Methuselah Stone as she clutched it in her hands. She didn't move. Her chest rose, if only a fraction of an inch, and fell at a pace slower than molasses. Methos reached out and prodded her. 

Amanda rolled over with a limp, flopping motion. The Methuselah Stone rolled out of her hand with a scratching sound. He picked it up and studied it. The glow was subdued, barely as strong as a firefly flitting around in the center of the stone. Maybe it was used up. He was exhausted deep in his bones. Immortal healing couldn't cure the kind of tiredness that came from raw, pure emotion.

Most of the Quickenings inside Methos screamed at him to shake her, throw cold water on her, anything to wake her up. Kronos whispered at him to behead the bitch, take the stone, and be done with all of it. Duncan gave Methos a soulful look with his dark Scottish eyes and told him that he'd trusted Methos to take care of Amanda if anything had happened to him.

Dark, liquid Scottish eyes and Gaelic accent notwithstanding, Methos told Duncan firmly to shut up, since he was dead, and, for that matter, Amanda was capable of taking care of herself. "As if you hadn't noticed."

"As if I hadn't noticed what?" Amanda had sat up while Methos was busy settling Quickenings, and was giving him a skeptical look. She held out one hand, eyebrows raised. Duncan hummed with glee.

Methos dropped the Methuselah Stone into her hand. It flared up with a rainbow flash of light, then settled into dull hibernation when she shoved it into the inside pocket of her coat. 

"That you can take care of yourself. Duncan was always a little iffy on that fact." 

"Duncan's inability to believe anyone could take care of themselves could be a very useful trait." Amanda's laughter hiccuped into a moment of tears before she got control of herself. She touched her chest over the heart. "I can feel him in here. His Quickening. His soul. Whatever it is. Alongside Rebecca and Darius and a whole lot of unsavory characters."

Methos' blood chilled. "I've got Duncan's Quickening."

It wasn't possible. He'd heard Duncan's internal voice, and he knew the feel of a taken Quickening. There was no way he'd mistake that adamant Scottish attitude for anything else. He'd had five thousand years of experience with this sort of thing.

"Then why is he insisting that I break up the Methuselah Stone before some horrible evil Immortal comes along and tries to get my head like Luther did Rebecca?" Amanda crossed her arms, tilted her head, and gave him that dubious stare.

"Okay, that sounds like the kind of thing Duncan would insist on," conceded Methos. He sheathed his broadsword and reached out to give Amanda a hand up. 

Something clicked. Electricity jolted through him like sticking a fork in a light socket, and Methos yelped.

Gregorian chants lilted through the air and Methos could swear he smelled chrism in a church layered in decades of dust. A polished ebony chessboard flickered in and out of being on a table set nearby. It would have been sacrilege if you were a Christian, but a Gothic pagan who'd only half-converted and lived on holy ground like Darius had loved chess. 

Amanda leapt back and shook her hand in the air. "What the hell was that? Did you do that?"

He missed one of the few men who'd ever given him a run for his money at chess. "You did something to them with the Methuselah Stone. Why are you asking me?"

"Hell if I know. You're the one with five thousand years of Immortal history behind him. I thought you might have an idea." Amanda shrugged, but glanced right at the spot the chess set had been. Darius' Quickening too, then. 

"You're the one with the magic rock. You should be able to explain how you use it." Methos shrugged, a quick up and down movement of the shoulders he pretended didn't leave his muscles shrieking in agony. From the way Amanda eyed him, she wasn't fooled. The way she was stretching her neck out, and surreptitiously rolling her ankles to point her toes, she wasn't feeling so hot herself. 

"Saved the world. I don't know exactly how. Why do you want me to explain a thing I just learned how to do? I combined Darius and Duncan's Dark and Light Quickenings. I just--" She leaned over and grabbed her pack off the floor. Amanda didn't quite meet his eyes. "I'm not strong enough to hold that much of a Quickening. Not from those two. Every head they ever took is a lot of heads combined. Maybe I'm just too young. Don't you remember stepping in and helping out? Your five thousand years had to be good for something, right?"

Amanda couldn't stop talking to draw a breath. He remembered every second in that godforsaken hellscape masquerading as Rebecca's abbey. "I remember stepping in."

There was no darkness without the light. He'd been in the maelstrom with Amanda. "We split the Quickenings between us, but instead of each of us taking some of them--"

"We've shared them. Is that possible?" Amanda was a clever one, not reeling from the news, but he could see her rethinking everything she knew about Immortality from what had just happened. 

"It's happened before." More than once, though he'd only been through it once before. The Chronicles had recorded it a couple of times. Now if only Joe's descendants were as lax as Joe had been about access to the Chronicles, he could look it up.

"So now it's happened on a bigger scale. We'll deal. You want to head back to London? Maybe see how Beijing held up, maybe? I haven't had good Chinese food in ages."

Classic Amanda, denying anything had happened, when everything had happened. Pressure vibrated up and down Methos' nerves, low in intensity at first, but as whoever it was got closer, sandpaper grated along his spine and into his skull. Amanda's head snapped up and swiveled to the door. She reached for her espada and dropped her pack back to the floor. "Company." 

"But is it friendly company?" Methos sighed and wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword. The wire dug into his hands in a familiar sort of way. It felt like he'd gone through the last century with his sword drawn. 

"Hell if I know." Amanda met his eyes with firm purpose and deadly intensity. Time to be serious, he supposed. 

They went to the doors and pushed them open, stepping out into the full sunlight of high noon, light that they couldn't have had if this hadn't been Darius' church. Thank God this place was holy ground to the edges of the gates. Methos was trying to hide the fine tremor of his hands. Amanda was in no shape for a battle either. Not with the limp she was also trying to hide. 

On the edge of the grounds stood one person he'd hoped never to see again. Green eyes, shaggy dark brown hair, and a mouth that twisted in anger whenever he came near. Her eyes took him in, took everything that had been between them, and dismissed him for a worthless stain upon the Earth. It was the best he could hope for from Cassandra. At least she wasn't coming for his head on sight any longer. Maybe in another thousand years they could go out for coffee.

"Darling. I thought you were going to wait in Montreuil to see if we made it." Amanda slid her blade into a sheath built into the back of her coat and went over to meet Cassandra, arms outstretched. The two women hugged and kissed the air over each other's cheeks. 

"Ceirdwyn started screaming about the Horsemen and I thought I'd better get here as soon as I could. In case there were problems." Cassandra's eyes fixed on Methos like steely jade chips. "In case Methos was seduced by the promises of his dead brothers."

Amanda wrapped one arm around Cassandra's waist and tugged her, one slow and unwilling step at a time, onto holy ground. "They did try to recruit Methos' scrawny ass, but we talked and decided it wasn't going to be a realistic career goal for him."

Cassandra folded her arms and gave Amanda one sidelong glance. "You give Methos too many chances."

She had three horses tied to the gates. Their saddlebags were laden with food and supplies. Even extra swords. Whatever she felt, she was giving him some kind of a chance. Or maybe they were all giving the world a chance. How many allies did Immortals have left, after all? 

Amanda shrugged and let Cassandra go. "At least as many as Rebecca gave me. Look, Duncan's at peace, Darius is at peace, and the world can start healing. No more Quickening shades wandering around. With any luck, Ceirdwyn's not being haunted by the heads she took."

"The world's in balance again. I can feel it." Cassandra's voice was taut and her smile was brittle. Methos couldn't blame her.

"You would know." Witches. Rebecca had been a kinder one than Cassandra, but Methos didn't expect - deserve - kindness from Cassandra. 

"All right, you two, kiss and pretend to make up before I send you off to sulk in your corners." Amanda smiled her most charming smile and hooked an arm through each of theirs. "Come on. Let's go grab some Prada."

"Save the world, get some designer fashion?" Methos threw back his head and laughed, and even Cassandra cracked a smile alongside them. Amanda was irrepressible. "Is that your reward?"

"I think I deserve something, don't you?" She dragged them off holy ground. The sky was blue, and the sun was bright yellow and shining in Methos' eyes. The clouds were normal, fluffy and white, and sparse, blowing in the wind. 

"I'm just happy the world's back to normal again," drawled Methos, letting Amanda enjoy the moment. Even Cassandra looked almost content. Duncan hummed along, his Quickening nestled under Methos' skin and Amanda's. "Maybe the engineers will be able to recreate some modern technology again."

The End


End file.
